CHAPTER 69 #2
Fitzwilliam gave him a look which should have ended inquiry in any man with proper fear.
Richard’s brows only lifted.
After breakfast, the visit acquired duration.
Lord Matlock did not announce it as repentance.
He announced it as business. He would remain long enough to understand the shape of John Wickham’s fraud, to speak with Mr. Latham, and to assist George Darcy in whatever arrangements might prevent the same names from finding honourable doors elsewhere.
He did not say that he had been wrong.
He said he wished to be useful.
Fitzwilliam accepted the distinction because, for the present, usefulness was not nothing.
Lady Catherine also remained, but from a very different principle.
She would wait for Rosings to answer. She would prove, by the simple operation of time and correspondence, that Mrs. Wickham was an injured relation, that Anne was perfectly safe, and that Pemberley had mistaken severity for justice.
A reply from Kent could not be expected for a week.
Lady Catherine called the delay fortunate. It would give her time to observe.
Darcy thought that was a fair description of siege.
Before the house could settle entirely into its new discomfort, Elizabeth asked the question which Fitzwilliam had half-expected from her since breakfast.
“Why does the Fenwick connexion signify so much?”
They were in the library then. The shutters had been half-closed against the sun, and the room smelled of warm paper and sealing-wax.
Elizabeth had been persuaded into a chair beneath the least oppressive stretch of shade, though the persuasion had required both Mrs. Doddridge’s silence and his own refusal to pretend that he was not watching.
Darcy stood near the mantel, where the empty grate held a sulky warmth from the day.
“It is old,” he said.
“That is not always the same as important.”
“No. But it is often mistaken for it.”
Mrs. Doddridge’s needle moved steadily through her work.
“Mrs. Wickham’s mother was a Fitzwilliam,” Darcy said. “My mother’s aunt, and Lady Catherine’s. She married a Fenwick.”
“Unwisely?”
“Respectably enough to remain family, unfortunately enough to become a warning. The Fenwicks had intermarried with the Fitzwilliams before, so the connexion was not new. But that branch declined sharply, and Mrs. Wickham was the only daughter left to represent it.”
Elizabeth’s eyes sharpened. “The poor cousin.”
“Yes. Near enough to be remembered. Reduced enough to be pitied. Proud enough to resent the pity, and practised enough to profit by it.”
“And Mr. Wickham?”
Darcy’s mouth tightened. “No one seems quite to remember how she found him.”
“That is a very suspicious absence of memory.”
“It is. He was a younger son of a large family, with almost nothing to inherit and a good head upon his shoulders. Not a brilliant match, but not a disgrace. Useful, capable, grateful—or so everyone wished to believe.”
Elizabeth was silent a moment.
“Together,” Darcy said, “they had what neither had separately. She had the claim. He had the competence.”
“That is a dangerous marriage.”
Darcy looked toward the closed door, beyond which Georgiana’s scales had begun again, uneven at first and then steadier.
“Yes.”
“And Georgiana was expected to pay the debt of pity.”
His hands closed behind his back.
“With herself.”
Mrs. Doddridge tied off her thread, but said nothing. The silence was more effective than any judgment.
The first day became three. Three became a week.
A reply from Rosings could not have come sooner, but Lady Catherine made the delay into evidence all the same. Silence, in her interpretation, was obedience.
Fitzwilliam had learned too dearly what silence could hide.
The house altered itself around the occupation. Lady Catherine observed.
She observed Mrs. Reynolds refusing to alter Mr. Grant’s instructions because Lady Catherine disliked a closed room.
She observed Mrs. Doddridge sitting in parlours with her work-bag open and her face arranged into the same neutrality that had defeated her before luncheon.
She observed Georgiana going to lessons, walking with Kitty before the heat rose, and practising scales with the air of a young lady who had opinions on fingering and very few on family politics.
She observed Elizabeth receiving household reports, refusing beef, accepting lemonade, writing letters in the morning, and becoming increasingly difficult to keep seated by the afternoon.
Every observation strengthened Lady Catherine in a different direction from the truth.
Lord Matlock went into the estate room with Mr. Latham and came out two hours later looking older and colder.
He had been shown enough to understand that John Wickham had not damaged Pemberley by incompetence.
He had damaged it by competence misapplied: by improving returns, concealing the increase, and stealing from what the estate became rather than what it had been.
That discovery horrified Lord Matlock more than clumsier theft would have done.
By evening, letters had gone under his seal to his agent, his solicitor, and men in London whose discretion was less virtue than habit.
No Wickham paper was to pass upon his name.
No Fenwick recommendation touching them was to proceed without inquiry.
No old claim of service or blood was to open a door before sense had first been admitted.
Fitzwilliam did not mistake it for tenderness.
Lord Matlock had seen the risk and begun to cut.
Lady Matlock said little. Sometimes she moved a chair before Elizabeth reached it. Sometimes she redirected Lady Catherine with a question so smooth that its usefulness could not be objected to until too late. Twice she sat with Georgiana and Kitty during music and asked no questions at all.
Richard remained because, as he informed Darcy, if Pemberley must endure a siege, it ought at least to have one officer who knew where the wine was kept.
He made Georgiana laugh, quarrelled with Kitty over the proper military use of bad Italian, carried messages for Latham, and, when no one else was near, congratulated Darcy with enough warmth and little enough ceremony that Darcy could not answer for several seconds.
George Darcy received the visitors in measured portions, like medicine.
Mr. Grant permitted him no long arguments and no triumphs.
Lady Catherine wished to revisit several points with him.
Mr. Grant said no. Lady Catherine objected.
Mr. Grant said no again, with the practised calm of a man who had no estate to inherit and therefore no reason to be afraid of her.
Elizabeth said he was a very fine physician.
Darcy thought him one of the great men of England.
The heat came harder at the beginning of August.
By four o’clock it had not dispersed; it had gathered.
The stone terrace had been drinking sun since noon, the gravel threw back light even as the afternoon began to pale, and the curtains in the west-facing rooms could keep out the glare but not the weight of it.
The house smelled faintly of warm wood, closed linen, cut flowers past their prime, and ink drying too slowly on too many letters.
Elizabeth had eaten almost nothing at breakfast. She had looked at the eggs, rejected the fish, accepted toast, and abandoned it after two bites as if even chewing had become an unreasonable demand.
Mrs. Doddridge had said nothing, which in itself was warning enough.
Mrs. Reynolds had sent lemonade before luncheon.
Darcy had watched Elizabeth drink half of it and insist that she was perfectly well, only warm.
Warm had become a word far too small for the day.
She could not settle. She sat, rose, crossed to the window, returned, took up her fan, put it down, and laughed when Darcy looked at her.
“Do not begin,” she said.
“I had not spoken.”
“You had assumed a posture.”
“A posture?”
“Of husbandly prosecution.”
He would have smiled if her colour had not been so uneven.
“Sit down,” he said.
“I am less comfortable sitting.”
That was possibly true, and therefore harder to oppose.
They were in the smaller drawing room, chosen after Lady Catherine had found objections to every room better suited to August.
Lady Matlock moved her fan steadily near the window.
Lord Matlock sat with a letter half-written on his knee.
Richard stood beside the mantel, where no fire had been laid for months and yet the marble still seemed to hold the day’s heat.
Lady Catherine had been speaking for some minutes about Rosings, or silence, or the absurdity of alarm when no answer had yet come.
Afterwards Darcy could not remember which matter had been important enough to keep Elizabeth upright.
He remembered only the bright line of sun at the edge of the carpet, the fan in Lady Matlock’s hand, the smell of warm roses in a vase past its prime, and Elizabeth’s fingers resting for one moment against the back of a chair.
He was already moving before he understood why.
“Elizabeth.”
She turned her head toward him. Her face had gone very pale.
“I am quite—”
The last word never formed.
He caught her before she reached the floor.
For one impossible instant she was all weight and no resistance in his arms, her head fallen against his shoulder, one hand sliding loose from the chair-back.
The room broke apart around him: Lady Matlock rising, Richard swearing under his breath, Mrs. Doddridge’s work falling to the carpet, Lady Catherine saying something sharp that stopped almost as soon as it began.
“Air,” said Mrs. Doddridge.
Her voice cut through the room like a knife laid flat.
“Stand back. Mr. Darcy, not the sofa—the light is on it.”
Mrs. Reynolds had appeared at the door as if summoned by fear itself.
“The north parlour,” she said.
“Not upstairs,” Mrs. Doddridge agreed. “Not yet.”
Darcy did not wait for more. He lifted Elizabeth carefully, one arm beneath her shoulders, the other beneath her knees, and carried her out of the room.